Twelve long years ago I found an F10 coupe here in Eugene still being driven by its original owner. I wrote it up at the other site, and titled it “The Ugliest car Ever?”. Recently I came across only my second F10 since starting this long, strange trip. That was a very welcome and pleasant surprise, as I didn’t expect any of these to still be plying the streets. More significantly, it gave the poor F10 a second chance to redeem itself, in my opinion of its looks, one it very much deserves.
This isn’t ugly at all! It’s cute. It’s not exactly a stellar design of its time (think VW Golf). Have my feeling changed because I’m older and gentler (some might disagree with the latter), if not necessarily wiser? Or is it because in comparison to so many of today’s cars (ahem; I’m looking at you, RAV4), it looks a lot better than it did in its time or in 2010?
Admittedly, it looks a bit better in profile than it does from the front. We’ll get back to that, um, quirky front end shortly.
Of course the wagon’s profile is better than the coupe’s, whose rear end was a bit high. But really, the main issue here was the F10’s high belt line and relatively small windows, which looked a bit odd at the time, but is of course par for the course today. Every car now has those basic features, as they’re inherently aerodynamic, among other things.The F10’s styling was just ahead of its time. Is that a sin?
Yes, the front end is not exactly attractive. The turn signals that looked like they were bought by the truckload from the Pep Boys detract from its, ah, limitations even further. The massive and deep headlight surrounds give new meaning to the term “tunnel vision”. But I’ve seen worse. I think?
What’s peculiar about my two F10 finds is that both of them have black headlight surrounds, whereas all the ones in the ads and other images on a Google search shows them to be argent (silver gray). Hmm.
As to front ends and current styling trends, I’m not picking on the RAV4, as it’s more representative than an outlier, but I am not sorry to see the styling trends it espouses (angry athletic shoe?) are apparently on the way out. Every styling era inevitably has its end.
Nothing more definitively indicates the end of this one—one that Toyota embraced with a bear hug—than the 2023 Prius. Its predecessor will go down in history as the 1959 batwing Chevrolet of the 21st century. What an about face, literally.
The exceptionally large C-pillar on this F10 wagon is a bit out of the ordinary. It probably reflects the fact that in Japan, the F10 was positioned as something of a premium small car, above the more pedestrian RWD Sunny/B210. Trying to look a bit more like a shooting brake and less like a basic wagon?
But…now that I think about, there was no corresponding B210 wagon sold in the US. Why was that, when Toyota was selling gobs of Corolla wagons? Hmm, again. Was the F10 wagon intended to fill that role? If so, it wasn’t a good call, as the F10’s sales were disappointing.
Frankly, the whole notion of selling two distinct and technically different lines of cars in this size category was a head-scratcher. But then Nissan in the seventies tended to evoke head lice. For a more detailed look at Nissan’s stylistic gyrations and the F10’s predecessor, I refer you to Rich Baron’s Cherry CC.
As a frame of reference, the F10 first arrived for the 1975 model year, at the same time that the very clean and angular VW Rabbit (Golf) arrived. A very stark study in contrasts.
As with the F10 coupe, I had a chance to meet the owner of this wagon. He’s had it for six years, and said it’s been a faithful companion to him.
He and his dog seem to sort of live out of the F10, although not necessarily sleep in it. A daytime home on wheels; or?
The passenger side front seat has been removed, to make more room for the two of them. Maybe they do sleep in it; I didn’t exactly ask. But one could do worse, given the F10 wagon’s reasonably long rear compartment. For a very small car, that is.
And it doesn’t ask much, in terms of fuel.
Related CC reading:
Curbside Classic: 1977 Datsun F-10 – It Got An F In Beauty School
Curbside Classic: ’74-’77 Datsun 100a (Cherry E10) – Cherry Picking
My brother had a F10 as his go to work car, apparently it did that just fine and kept the mileage off his RX3 Mazda coupe and his fuel bill stayed manageable.
Oh, it’s ugly. But, at the same time, it does have an endearing sort of charm about it. I’ve never seen the wagon version before, and agree, it seems nicer than the fastback coupe.
I remember seeing one of the fastbacks regularly in a parking lot at the University of Maryland, back around the late 80’s/early 90’s timeframe, and thinking what a vulgar little car. But I also remember taking a peek inside, and being impressed, that it actually had roll-down windows in the back, something that was pretty much extinct from the domestic makers by that time in a 2-door.
I guess in a sense though, time heals all wounds, or at least softens things, because that front-end isn’t nearly as hard on the eyes as I remember. It doesn’t look bad from most angles, but from dead-on in the front, is the worst. I think the biggest problem is just that bulky trim around the headlights. At a quick glance, though, the overall effect of the front looks slightly AMC-ish to me.
Right. A little like a horizontally smooshed ’75 Hornet. I see this.
I was thinking alternate universe Gremlin.
I remember the coupe/hatch, but not this wagon/hatch/shooting brake. I don’t hate it.
The butterscotch paint doesn’t do this car any favors (but it seems they were all this color). I think its looks were compared unfavorably to the third generation Toyota Corolla liftback, which was a handsome little car.
Popular colour back then. Maybe the default colour for small Nissans. Used to see it a lot on 210s.
The F10 was probably the runner up to what my Dad eventually bought in the fall of 1976; he was looking for a commuter car that had good traction, as we’d moved back to Vermont and though he could still probably have bought another Beetle, the rear engine RWD cars he’d choosen a decade before when we lived there were no longer sold (he bought a Renault R10 new during our first stint). He wanted an inexpensive car, Saab was a bit too dear, and other FWD cars like the Dasher, Rabbit, Civic, and Accord were pretty pricey at the time. He didn’t consider a Fiat due to my bad experience with one, and that pretty much left the Datsun F10 and the Subaru DL as candidates. He drove the F10 and liked it but as I remember what queered it for him were the vents on the hood, which looked like a engineering change to him; no other ’76’s had them, don’t know if they had carburator issues or what they were for, but my Dad just went for the Subaru, which he bought in Winooski. Nowdays it’s hard to find a RWD car (that isn’t expensive) but back then, FWD was the hard thing to find on inexpensive cars.
Appearance…well, the F10 wasn’t good looking, but that was secondary, since having good traction was pretty important…and FWD was just starting to be more common. Subaru had a lone AWD wagon, but we had another wagon as primary car and AWD wasn’t common yet (trucks offered 4WD) and he didn’t think we needed it…he did change over to snow tires every fall though. And the Subaru had its hood fly open on him (not sure why, but even the secondary latch failed) in the wind, buckling it, he never replaced it so for the rest of its tenure with him (and my sister who eventually got it as a hand-me-down) it had a rubber shock cord between both front wheel wells holding down the hood. He didn’t worry about theft (indeed, I think many cars still had exterior hood latches where anybody walking by could easily open the hood on a car) and frankly he didn’t much care that it looked bad or hurt aerodynamics. In a way, I kind of like that Datsun left the car styled as it would probably have sold in its home market rather than trying to style it specifically for sale in North America…it is an imported car, and it looks what you’d expect an imported car of the 70’s to look, a bit odd to most tastes in the US, but of course that’s subjective, the function was more important than the appearance to us anyhow.
The Subaru ended up being first and only in our family, whereas we’ve gravitated to Datsun/Nissan….I had a 710, my 2 youngest sisters had 2 each (4 total), a 200SX, and 3 240 SX’s …one of which my surviving younger sister still owns, having bought it new in ’97). Same sister did own a Toyota Tercel (only Toyota in our family…no Hondas, and sadly no Mazdas).
Interestingly to me, a lady I worked with in my department at my first job out of college 42 years ago owned a ’79 Datsun 310 coupe while I worked with her, I moved (half a country) away and hadn’t seen her in most of that time until recently she attended a wedding near where I now live, and we got together for lunch. I considered her 310 coupe to be the near relative of the F10 coupe, the 310 was a bit better styled for most tastes, and it was practical (we weren’t in Vermont, but still in New England where good traction in winter is still desirable). Don’t know why (since we didn’t have much time to talk and catch up) but I also found out that she used to own a Renault R10 just like my Dad had (hers was bright green, my Dad’s kind of a silver grey). I was in a carpool with her and her husband back then so I’d kind of have expected that the topic would have come up earlier (sometime 42 years ago or so). Our carpool was rather crazy in that we all owned 2 door cars (even her husband, who had a ’78 Fiesta), mine was the ’78 Scirocco), didn’t seem too odd at the time though.
The 310 coupe had interesting styling, clearly the F-10’s successor model while the other 310s were of the Golf-clone look that was spreading like rabbits (sorry…) at the time.
Datsuns of that era had a unique look that kind of reminds me of Ultraman, for some reason.
I guess compared to some current market monstrosities it ain’t too bad. But I remember when these were new, and how visually off-putting they were, like Datsun was purposely aiming for ugly.
This hatchback is a little more palpable visually than the coupe, but that unpainted front door surround drags it down.
You mention the Prius – the new one is quite gorgeous, but I’m sorry to hear it’s lost some of the utility of the liftback due to styling preferences.
Not much that could be done about the 5-mph bumpers, and the grille-mount turn signals were a followup from that since the rest of the world’s Cherry F10s had turn signals in the thin chrome bumpers.
Four doors would improve the proportions a lot, if they were paired with traditional wagon quarter windows and slim D-pillars. (Nissan was building Skyline wagons with blind quarters or even cargo-area opera windows at the time). There was an F-10 4-door sedan that wasn’t sold in North America (and a 2-door sedan sold in Canada but not the US).
2-door small wagons weren’t that unusual but the domestic ones had very long doors and short gaps between them and the rear wheelarches, the long door-to-rear-wheelarch span lets down both the coupe and the wagon.
It very much for me evokes what a two door Subaru Leone wagon might have looked like. This may be what keeps it out of the “very ugly” column, that sort of familiarity.
There are various cars that over the years have crossed the threshold of “Highly objectionable and offputting” to “Unattractive but I have my own faults too”
The AMC Pacer features on that list, as does the F-10 coupe, the first Leone was on the border of that list. And a much more recent one is in fact the 4th generation Prius, which I still don’t find attractive but don’t recoil from anymore either. Familiarity does indeed make for greater acceptance, it just takes longer with some. I like to think that’s a sign of maturity. 🙂
It’s an amazing find though, doubly so as I wasn’t even aware of this variant, so finding something you aren’t aware of gets the double bonus.
It very much for me evokes what a two door Subaru Leone wagon might have looked like
Nissan was a still relatively new 20% stakeholder in Fuji Heavy Industries at the time this Cherry was in gestation, so it’s likely this is no coincidence.
To my eyes it doesn’t look any worse than all too many of today’s brand new CUV blobs.
In the first photo, it’s too bad that the “SUV” in the background isn’t a Nissan product. Perhaps a Juke would’ve held the highest irony quotient. 🙂
I was living in Colorado and backpacking on weekends, so I hung with guys with jobs buying Jeeps, Subarus and other “mountain” vehicles. One of the guys had a new F-10. The wagon and coupe were both pushed via comparisons to the Subarus that were showing up everywhere in Colorado. I fell for the Subaru wagon fad at the time. (I’d like to forget that!)
But we all saw load of tinny silly B-210s everywhere and knew Datsuns pretty well. The F-10 was a legit attempt to put something on the road in Colorado that wasn’t made out of recycled Folger’s coffee cans. Front wheel drive too. It was the thing in 1977.
The Datsun line up was absolutely hideous. Long gone were the 510 days. In 1977, the Datsun dealerships were selling cars that looked like McDonaldland characters. The F-10 was probably the worst. The coupe was so bad, the wagon version like this, almost looked normal.
Anyway, my buddy’s F-10 was new. And like a lot of Japanese cars – too damn narrow, with a high window beltline. Black vinyl interior. All business, which fit the overall design. The F-10, didn’t look sporty, or luxurious. It attempted to look functional, and in a way, it tried to do what the Pontiac Aztek tried to do decades later – and also failed.
It was too expensive as well. The B-210 had a good reputation, but was also dirt cheap. The F-10 was about the same size, but cost thousands more. FWD was obviously the future, but why pay a premium for what all cars would end up having in a few years? And looked like that? Datsun showrooms were filled with alien-looking rides at the time.
I’m writing from Boulder, Colorado. I’m trying to restore my late father’s 1977 F-10 Sportwagon: it’s one of the few memories I have left of him and I’m just trying to keep it running. If anyone knows someone who owns an F-10 (anywhere!), please let me know (lev.szent@gmail.com). I’m looking to buy one for parts or to just to buy the parts I currently need. Thank you, Lev.
” The B-210 had a good reputation, but was also dirt cheap. The F-10 was about the same size, but cost thousands more”
I doubt that it cost thousands of dollars more than the B-210 which would make it approach a 280Z in price. Maybe a couple to a few hundred more, no?
Like most all commenters here, I, too, found the F10 front rather off-putting at the time of its introduction. From today’s point of view, it’s not so bad. In my mind, the look of the gen. 4 Prius takes the cake for ugly, especially the back end at night. I still favor the looks of the GM Design Studio when Bill Mitchell was head. The aggressive look on many Lexus models – that huge mesh-like black grille that looks like Jaws searching for food – makes the looks of the Datsun F10 more acceptable.
That makes me wonder – do you reckon consumers are more willing to accept ugliness now than we were back then? Or (shudder) do they actually think aggressive ugliness is desirable? In my neck of the woods any Prius is an unusual sighting, but the current RAV4 is just an eyesore in drastic need of remedial bodywork – yet people buy them! Because Toyota, I guess. I just don’t get it.
Fortunately we were spared this car in Australia. Like so many of this era’s Datsuns, the basic shape is okay, maybe a bit out of step with European style, but quite acceptable. It’s just the front and rear detailing that looks wrong. Not just different, or awkward, but downright wrong. And it’s not just the North American version; even with the original small bumpers and integrated indicators that headlight treatment just doesn’t work.
Usually if I squint I can kind of figure out the look they stylist was aiming at before the production guys came along, but not here. What were they thinking?
No, CC-in-scale mercifully does not have one of these.
I’m getting a Subaru vibe too:
1977 Subaru Wagon by Jason Ahrns, on Flickr
Co worker had a blue “F10” hatch; spiffy little thing. A/C fan, “super loud”. Traded in “85” for a “Buick.
The ones that was exported to Europe looked a little better, or what do you think?
Reminds me of an ugly girl wearing ugly glasses.
thats what i’m sayin the first generation datsun 100a had a better front end to me honestly
The parking lights and turn signals integrated into the bumper certainly look nicer than the carelessly thrown-on ones on the American-spec car, but ugggh, that crude and obvious metal blockoff plate where the US-spec side marker light or the Japan-spec repeater would have gone!
As you say, a little better. Still awkward though. I have to wonder why the indicators are mounted so far inboard. And why the headlights are recessed so much.
Composite headlamps shaped like the perimeter of these nacelles, and the grille brought forward à la VW Jetta-Golf Mk2, would look quite a bit nicer. And yeah, the indicators need to be spaced out further apart.
i prefer the e10 over the f10 in the long run body style wise
Every car that I ever considered “ugly” gets a pass from me now since angry and aggressive styling became the norm.
I still am surprised so many people want to represent themselves this way in modern cars, most of which are just nasty looking.
I’ll take a previously-considered-ugly old Datsun any day of the week!
When the F-10 first came out I was working as the assistant to the service manager of a very large Datsun dealership outside Washington, DC. At that time we could sell almost any “non Z” Datsun cars, especially 210 cars. Our sales department was selling 210 models that were loaded up with dealer accessories like styled alloy wheels, deluxe stereo systems, sunroofs, and more. We often had waiting lists for 210 cars. Those cars were almost selling themselves!
Yes we could sell Datsuns before they even arrived in town. Except for the F-10. We had quite a few F-10 cars of all models sitting in the new car lot. The Datsun side [We sold BMW as well] of the new car lot held mostly the more expensive 610 & 710 cars, Z cars, 4X4 trucks and the dreaded F-10. The general public just didn’t seem to like the F-10.
I was sometimes asked to attend management meetings, and I remember the sales people complaining about how ugly the F-10 cars were, and they finally stopped displaying one in the showroom because it turned off buyers. The GM even tried giving big bonuses for selling an F-10 — ANY F-10.
In the service department, I was in charge of deciding who worked on various customer cars. I had only one tech who had been to the Datsun F-10 course, especially for the FWD system. The other techs would prefer not to work on the F-10, especially if it involved warranty labor times.
I don’t remember the F-10 being difficult to repair except for the FWD on some of the earlier cars. One of the problems we dealt with was the fact we were only provided with one set of the special FWD tools, and the various tool truck guys like Snap-on, Mac, and Matco took a long time to get the tools in stock.
I don’t remember exact comments from customers who bought the F-10, but many bought one because of a low price deal. The F-10 wasn’t a bad car mechanically, and it got excellent fuel mileage, however I believe it was the public’s opinion that it wasn’t a good looking car, that caused such low sales figures.
It looks a more primitive sort of Lancia Beta HPE executive
Now, that’s a find! An F10 wagon! Is CC having a Nissan Cherry January?
The wagons were probably the best looking of the Cherries, both in the E10 and F10. Aside the front, they make for nice unusual compacts.
One thing that is missing in this one (and previous F10 posts), are the odd black plastic wheel covers, which my family’s F10 sedan came with. To this day they remain a baffling design.
my mom drive one of these in the 80s it was a red hatch model
i’m considering on importing a e10 someday since there is one X1-R cherry in florida right now so it should be possible
i’m wasn’t really a fan of the front end of f10’s in specific the grille mostly…